or intriguer. In the service of Louis XV., he went to Russia in female attire, obtained employment as the "lectrice female reader to the Czarina Elizabeth, and under that disguise carried on political and semi-political negotiations with wonderful audacity and success. He subsequently returned to Russia in male costume, describing himself as the brother of the Czarina's lectrice. He wrote well, plotted well, and fought well. In 1762, he appeared in England as Secretary of Embassy to the Duke of Nivernois. Louis XVI. granted him a pension, and when he went over to Versailles to return thanks for the favour, Marie Antoinette insisted on his assuming woman's attire. To gratify this foolish whim D'Eon one day swept in to the royal presence dressed like a duchess, and supported the character to the great delight of the royal and noble spectators. After thus masquerading for some time, he returned to England in 1794; and being here in 1789, after the Revolution was accomplished, the Convention deprived him of his pension, and placed his name in the fatal list of emigrés. From the English Government he received a pension of 2007. a-year, but his extravagant style of living involved him in debt and distress. In his old days, he turned his fencing capabilities to account, appearing in matches with the famous. Chevalier de St. George, and permanently reassumed female attire. Walpole gives the following as the best account he could collect of the chevalier: "The Duc de Choiseul, I know, believed it was a woman. After the death of Louis XV. D'Eon had leave to go to France, on which the young Comte de Guerchy went to M. de Vergennes, Secretary of State, and gave him notice that the moment D'Eon landed at Calais, he, Guerchy, would cut his throat, or D'Eon should his; on which Vergennes told the Count that D'Eon was certainly a woman. Louis XV. corresponded with D'Eon; and when the Duke de Choiseul had sent a vessel, which lay six months in the Thames, to trepan and bring off D'Eon, the king wrote a letter with his own hand to give him warning of the vessel. This strange personage died in 1810: when an inspection of the body by several medical men, in presence of the Père Eliseé, who attended for Louis XVIII., was followed by a public certificate that the chevalier was an old man. He died at the age of 82. Nevertheless, in 1771, it had been proved to the satisfaction of the jury, on a trial before the Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, that the Chevalier was of the female sex. The case was between Hayes, a surgeon, and Jaques, an underwriter; and it was to settle a wager, Jaques having bound himself (on receiving a premium,) to pay Hayes a certain sum whenever the fact was established that D'Eon was a woman. Morande, an infamous Frenchman, was a witness, and gave such testimony that no human being could doubt the fact of D'Eon being of the female sex, only that Morande was altogether unworthy of credit. But two French medical men gave equally conclusive evidence (if they could be believed) and the jury (before whom D'Eon did not appear,) returned a verdict for the plaintiff, with 7021. damages ! Very large bets were depending on the result of this absurd trial. SIR MATTHEW MITE. General Smith, from a cheesemonger's son, rose to an insolence of wealth by plunder in the Indies. His wife was covered with chains and pearls and diamonds; and he himself, who had been drawn by Foote, in The Nabob, under the character of Sir Matthew Mite, was the deepest of all deep gamesters in London. Being excluded from the fashionable club of young men of quality at Almack's, and wishing to plunder them like the Indies, he and a set of sharpers had formed a plan for a new club, which, by the excess of play, should draw all the young extravagants thither. They built a magnificent house in St. James's-street, furnished it gorgeously, and enrolled the members of both the clubs at White's and Almack's. The titular master of the house the first night acquainted the richest and most wasteful of the members that they might be furnished with loans of ready money, even as far as forty thousand pounds. And this pernicious seminary, erected, in defiance of so many laws, at the very gate of the king's palace, and menacing ruin to their heirs to the most opulent of the Legislature, was tolerated by a Court that delighted in seeing the great Lords and Commoners reduced to a state of beggary and dependence. Foote, in his farce, played the character of Sir Matthew Mite; in the piece, the Society of Antiquaries come in for a good share of satire; and the club-morals of the time are illustrated in the circumstance of Sir Matthew being requested not to allude to "hanging," as a member's brother had so finished his career. Sir Matthew subsequently dg a member, Touchet replies, "That's right! stick to that! for though the Christian club may have some fears of the gallows, they don't value damnation a farthing." ADMIRAL KEPPEL AND THE DEY OF ALGIERS. When, in 1751, Keppel was employed to negotiate a treaty of peace with the states of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers, during an interview with the Dey for the restoration of some English vessels which had been captured by the Dey's piratical subjects, the Admiral is said to have advocated the cause entrusted to him with a warmth and spirit which completely confounded the Dey's preconceived notions of what was due to absolute power. "I wonder," he said, "at the King of England's insolence, in sending me such a foolish, beardless boy." “Had my master," retorted Keppel, "considered that wisdom was to be measured by the length of the beard, he would have sent you a he-goat." The Dey, it is said, was so enraged at this speech, that he even contemplated the immediate execution of Keppel, and ordered his mutes to attend with the bowstring. Keppel, however, retained his selfpossession, and pointing from a window to the English ships, which were riding at anchor in the bay: "If it is your will," he said, "that I should die, there are Englishmen enough in that fleet to make me a glorious funeral pile." This argument was considered a convincing one by the Dey, who subsequently consented to the terms proposed to him by Keppel. -Jesse's George Selwyn, vol. iv. HOGARTH CARICATURES WILKES AND CHURCHILL. As Chief-Justice Pratt delivered his immortal judgment against General Warrants, Hogarth was seen in a corner of the Common Pleas, pencil and sketch-book in hand, fixing that famous caricature, from which, as long as caricature shall last, Wilkes will squint upon posterity. Nor was it his first pictorial offence. The caricaturing had begun some little time before, greatly to the grief both of Wilkes and Churchill; for Hogarth was on friendly terms with both, and had indeed, within the past two years, drunk "divine milk-punch" with them and Sir Francis Dashwood in the neighbourhood of Medmenham Abbey. Disregarding their earnest remonstrance, he assailed Pitt and Temple at the close of the preceding year in his first print of the Times. The North Briton retaliated; and the present caricature of Wilkes was Hogarth's rejoinder. It stung Churchill past the power of silence. Churchill replied, and great was the excitement. "Send me Churchill's poem on Hogarth," writes old money-loving Lord Bath from Spa; "but if it be long, it will cost a huge sum in postage." With his rejoinder, such as it was, Hogarth lost little time. He issued for a shilling, before the month was out, "The Bruiser C. Churchill, (once the Rev.) in the character of a Russian Hercules, regaling himself after having killed the monster Caricatura that so sorely galled his virtuous friend the heaven-born Wilkes." It was a bear, in torn clerical bands, and with paws in ruffles; a pot of porter that has just visited his jaws hugged on his right, and a knotted club of Lies and North Britons clutched on his left; to which, in a later edition of the same print, he added a scoffing caricature of Pitt, Temple, and Wilkes. The poet meanwhile wrote to the latter, who had gone to Paris to place his daughter at school, and told him that Hogarth, having violated the sanctities of private life in this caricature, he meant to pay him back with an Elegy, supposing him dead; but that a lady at his elbow was dissuading him with the flattery that Hogarth was already killed. That the offending painter was already killed, Walpole and others beside this nameless lady also affirmed; and Colman boldly avouched in print, that the Epistle had "snapped the last cord of poor Hogarth's heartstrings." But men like Hogarth do not snap their heartstrings so easily. The worst that is to be said of the fierce assault, is bad enough. It embittered the last years of a great man's life; and the unlooked-for death of assailant and assailed within nine days of each other, prevented the reconciliation which would surely, sooner or later, have vindicated their common genius.From the Edinburgh Keview, No. 163. PLAYING ON THE SALT-BOX. The most successful performance with a rolling-pin and a salt-box, beaten together, the noise being modulated so as to resemble a sort of "music," took place at Ranelagh. Dr. Burney tells us :- "In 1759, I set, for Smart and Newbery, Thornton's burlesque ode on St. Cecilia's Day. It was performed at Ranelagh to a crowded audience, as I was told, for I then resided in Norfolk. Beard sang the Salt-Box Song, which was admirably accompanied on that instrument by Brent, the fencing-master, and father of Miss Brent, the celebrated singer; Skeggs on the broomstick, as bassoon, and a remarkable performer on the Jew's harp,'Buzzing twangs the iron lyre.' All Cleavers were cast in bell-metal for this entertainment. the performers of the Old Woman's Oratory, employed by Foote, were, I believe, employed at Ranelagh on this occa sion." Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, tells how he praised the humour of this Ode, and seemed much diverted with it, repeating aloud the following passage : "In strains more exalted the salt-box shall join, And clattering and battering and clapping combine; By teeth coercive in firm durance kept, Whizzing with the wav'ring wire." HADDOCKS AND WHITINGS. Dr. Carlyle was invited to dine with Lord Lovat and some friends at Lucky Vint's noted village tavern, near Edinburgh. As soon as they were seated, Lovat asked the Doctor to send him a whiting from the dish before him. As they were all haddocks, Carlyle replied they were not whitings. Lovat stormed and swore more than fifty dragoons, as he had bespoke whitings. One of the party tipped Carlyle the wink, when he said he must be mistaken, and sent Lovat a fish, with which he was delighted, swearing that he could never eat a haddock in all his life. It appeared that the landlady hearing Lovat was so peremptory in his order against haddocks, and she having no other, made her cook carefully scrape out St. Peter's mark on the shoulders, and so make them pass for whiting, as she had often done before. |